Locals: The DewDroppers

Thursday

Jul 21, 2011 at 12:01 AMJul 21, 2011 at 7:21 PM

I was sitting on the curb outside Zeno's chatting up The DewDroppers when a young woman named Alex, visiting from North Carolina, interrupted us to fawn over the joyous, unbounded performance she had just witnessed.

I was sitting on the curb outside Zeno's chatting up The DewDroppers when a young woman named Alex, visiting from North Carolina, interrupted us to fawn over the joyous, unbounded performance she had just witnessed.

"This type of music, whatever it is, is the type I really like!"

Don't blame Alex for struggling to pin down this trio. Nobody would have much luck.

Guitarist Joe Gilliland, drummer Adam Nedrow and pianist Counterfeit Madison (with occasional assistance from bassist Michael Kohn) have been swinging hard since last year, when Andy Gallagher recruited them to join his folk-rock band Trains Across the Sea. Between rehearsals with Gallagher, they began to kick out old-timey jams, plucking from genres spanning the 20th century.

The resulting music can shift from Dixieland jazz to rip-roaring country to improvised thrash breakdowns.

"It's such a mangled mess of the new and the old," Gilliland said.

That much is clear from a listen to The DewDroppers' debut EP, "No Good." What's not so evident from their recordings: The band whisks through these songs breathlessly, as if performing atop a bullet train desperately trying to hold the songs together (and succeeding).

"I'm not OK in the musical head at all," Madison said. "If you get three of that [sort of musician] in a room"

The creativity plays out in other ways. To release "No Good," The DewDroppers hosted a Sadie Hawkins dance at a Franklinton warehouse, where they played an extra set of classic covers as The DooWoppers.

That was one in a string of alter ego theme parties that has included burlesque and saloon music. More events are in the works.

Shows out of town and new recordings are on the horizon, too. But first they'll play Thursday at Carabar with Way Yes and This Is My Suitcase. Keep your bearings about you or risk getting barreled over.